LUX - General Mills Mobile Design Concepts Challenge

Welcome to another LUX Challenge! The LUX is a "Live User Experience Design Challenge" that we like to run as a fast design challenge live at a customer event or conference. The "LUX - General Mills Mobile Design Concepts Challenge" will be run during the next 67 hours. At the end of the challenge we will take the presentation screens you create and share your collective creative talent! 

We are very excited to provide this cool design opportunity to the TopCoder Design Studio Community - a fun way to showcase your FAST!! design skills!

The LUX Challenge Series provides you with an opportunity to show digital leaders from some of the largest brands in the world just how good your user interface and user experience (UI/UX) design skills are. LUX challenges are fast, fun, and have more chances for you to capture prize money. 

Note: This is our 18th LUX Challenge! No previous experience in a LUX challenge is needed to compete - jump in and give it a try! Make sure to follow the Challenge Forum and ask questions as things move very fast in a LUX challenge.

Challenge Details
The goal of this challenge is to take the provided design problem and create a simple and clean design user experience (UX)! We are looking for you to also think through how the application will be used and what new ideas/concepts you think might be interesting to our audience.

Challenge Timeline and Rolling Checkpoint 
- Challenge Starts : 26th June 2015 18.00 PM EDT
- Rolling Checkpoint will start : 28th June 2015 13.00 PM EDT 
- Challenge Ends : 29th June 2015 13.00 PM EDT

We are offering 8 Placements! Plus $50 Rolling Checkpoint prizes!
1) $1800
2) $1500
3) $1000
4) $500
5) $500
6) $250
7) $250
8) $150

Rolling Checkpoint Review ($50) 
Blake Walles (bwalles) will provide a design review if you submit your initial designs by 28th June 2015 13.00 PM EDT 
— Within the hour we will provide any design feedback/guidance
— you must watch the forum for your feedback! 
All qualifying* checkpoint submissions will win $50

Background Overview 
General Mills is of course known for their amazing brands like Cheerios, Green Giant vegetables, and Haagen-Dazs ice cream! Their journey began all the way back in 1880 (wow!) and today, we'd like the Topcoder community to help them re-imagine a crucial part of their business that is front and center to their workforce - their internal worker portal. 

The Design Problem
General Mills internal worker portal is where employees search and find content, like policy documents - and perform a variety of tasks like requesting time off, checking on benefits, and reading up on the latest news and career opportunities a General Mills employee has. While functional, the current experience was designed for desktop/browser use and could use modernization to meet today's employee's expectations for a more collaborative, interactive experience that relies less on static content provided by the HR department. 

LUX Design Goals
General Mills wants to re-imagine what their worker portal could be! In this challenge they are asking the Topcoder community to provide Mobile Design Concepts that take the functionality of the current site and make it:
- Much Simpler to Access and Navigate
- Clean and Beautifully Designed
- Customized and User Specific where employees can go to get content targeted for their role, interests and career path
- Collaborative and Social
- A mobile-first experience

Mobile Application = Mobile Worker Portal  
Application Name(s) = Think of a name for your application! 

Branding Guidelines
- Please, before you start designing, Have a look at http://www.generalmills.com/ 
- When designing, take into consideration current color schemes, fonts, and the use of large/visual imagery that defines sections. 
- Your designs do not need to copy this exact look and feel, but when designing your mobile concept, keep this established look and feel in mind. 
- But don't be afraid to advance and push this look and feel forward!!!
- We have also supplied you with a branding document and assets to get you started. This documents includes: colors, fonts and images. Please use these assets in your designs.

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Mobile Storyboards
- Design screens for iPhone 6 (Portrait view, 750x1334px)
- This is a native iOS application (research iOS design patterns and techniques)
- We only need 8 screens plus the presentation screen - so pick/design what you think will "showcase" this application. You can create alternative screens to the ones listed.
- In these LUX challenges the "Concepts" you propose really help the presentation

00) Presentation Screen - 1920x1080 (16:9 Ratio)
- This is the most important screen - make it look good! (like you are selling your application)
- Spend more time on your presentation screen as it is the first thing we will show the audience!
- Create a presentation screen of your mobile application!
- Place your designs within an iPhone template! Showcase your submission
- This will be shown to the conference attendees 
- Presentation Size = 1920x1080 (16:9 Ratio) - It must be this size!

1) Login Screen
- Bright, visual and supremely easy login screen. 
- Create a simple logo for this Mobile Worker Portal, Something simple and clean that doesn't distract from your screen designs
- The current site has the current logo/wordmark, but let's make it better. 
- Your concepts should showcase a logo or wordmark that relates to the General Mills Employee Portal. 
- Feel free to rename this. NOTE: Do not re-design the iconic General Mills logo - instead use the logo in whatever employee portal logo or wordmark you design. 
- Use imagery - General Mills has amazing brands, their employees should be reminded of the joy they bring to the world through great tasting products every time they log in! We've included some brand images to get you started.

2) User Dashboard Screen
- A key element of the new employee portal will be the user's new and beautiful dashboard! 
- This is the main screen that the user will see after they login and will serve as their "homepage". 
- Think of the dashboard as a series of shortcuts, cards, or links that take you deeper into the portal. Which cards/ links are displayed is up to the individual user. There should be a simple, elegant and mobile first way for the user to add, remove and reorganize their cards/ links. 

- A successful User Dashboard will :
-- Be a joy to navigate : The use of modern icons to represent key sections of the app. The interactions and select of these sections should be intuitive and user friendly.
-- Be visual and personal : The User Dashboard is the user's mobile homescreen. Their profile picture should be big. The dashboard should feel like theirs.
-- Customizable : Show us how a user can easily drag/drop/swipe new icons into place while removing other icons from their dashboard. This needs to be simple and elegant! This is very important to the client. They desire a customizable dashboard interface; so think mobile actions, think simple, and make it beautiful! 
-- Showcase notifications : Users will need to clearly see when they have new content, new messages, new notifications that they should pay attention to. Design a clean way to alert a user of new notifications from the dashboard and throughout the rest of the app. Is there a notification window/ screen, an icon that updates, an animation suggestion? What are your ideas.
-- Clean and Neat : Other items that are not represented by icons on the dashboard should be accessible through a Hamburger Menu. Please show us what this navigation looks like open with the below navigation items.

- Available Cards/Links/Icons User Dashboard :
-- My Profile : Where a user would go to change personal information, add experiences to an internal resume, stay compliant with HR requests. Note: User could get a notification on this icon alerting them they have an action that needs to happen
-- Communities : A key feature for this app will be the ability for users to follow topics they are passionate about or have questions about. By having user and expert communities within the organization, other users will be able to find information more easily through a self-service manner. Users will be able to join and contribute to sub-communities within the organization with ease. Note: A user should see if there are any new notifications for them from their dashboard related to groups/ communities that are apart of or following
-- G Content : This is General Mills "News" icon where a user would easily see if there are brand new stories, announcements, blogs, videos that are of interest to them
-- My Time : Where a user would go to view time off, request time off, experience an interactive and social calendar
-- Search (global feature) : Search is a KEY element to this experience. It needs to be supremely easy to use and remember. We're designing for a mobile experience so please show a variety of ways to search: Traditional = typing into search, Mobile = voice activated search. Search should be a universal piece of functionality that is EASILY accessible throughout the entire app.
-- Ask HR : Where a user would first go to ask a HR related question or create an HR 'ticket' and view additional HR related information.
- Remember to show us the functionality and interactions for adding and removing an icon/card/tile/link to the dashboard

Hamburger Menu Links (Main Navigation):
- Dashboard
- My Profile
- Communities
- G Content (news)
- My Time
- Ask HR
- Notifications
- Logout

3) My Profile Screen
- You can think of this as the user's "profile page". 
- This is where they would go to update profile info; username, password, profile pic, name, personal info, etc. 
- They can also add experiences and build or update their internal "resume". 
- If there are any specific HR tasks those would show up here as well. 
- This page can be pretty simple, clean and straightforward.

4) Communities Screen
- A user will be able to join or follow specific groups and sub-communities at the company. 
- Simply show us a user interacting within a specific user community. Maybe they're posting a question OR answering a question posted by another employee.
- Another capability for the Communities page is for HR to have a support Community where workers can enter support requests like "how do I add a newborn child to my benefits plan?" and receive direct support from an HR professional who monitors and tracks cases opened by employees
- There should also be another section within the Communities for chat. Think about a tab nav structure to jump between these 2 sections. The chat functionality should allow you to :
-- Find and follow other employees
-- Post messages back and forth
- Think of this as a mix of Google Hangouts and simplified Facebook

5) G Content (News) Screen
- Think elegant, mobile news application. 
- See some examples of elegant news apps here. 
- This is the internal announcements and news portal for the organization. 
- Design a beautiful page that would allow a user to :
-- Easily sort through media (news, articles, blogs, videos)
-- Favorite or LIKE a piece of content
-- Share the content socially (on an internal social intranet) 
- Remember - a user would see a notification of a recommended piece of content from their dashboard - so carry that notification over so a user can easily see which piece of content has been recommended for them. 

6) My Time Screen
- My Time screen is a very simple screen. 
- If a user clicks 'My Time' they then seen a modal screen that has 3 vital Time-off pieces of information :
-- PTO Remaining 55.4 hr
-- Next Day Off 08/17/15
-- Next Holiday 06/06/15
- Below this vital information a user should see a simple button featuring the Workday Logo with the following copy below the button :
- "Workday Mobile App - Download from the iOS App Store or Google Play today and get productive right away!"

7) Ask HR Screen
- This is a simple screen for a user to communicate directly with a HR employee. This screen should include:
-- IM or Video Call : the user should have the option to initiate an IM conversation or start a video chat (think FaceTime and Google Hangouts). These should be the main interactions on the screen.
-- There should also be a brief set of FAQs. This allows the user to maybe find their answer before contacting HR
-- Submit a Ticket: Submit a ticket to HR. This could be about something that is broken, a concern about a policy, etc.
- You can start to think about how to break these 3 sections out into maybe a tab structure: Ask HR, FAQs, Submit Ticket

8) Notifications Screen (Optional)
- The notifications is really straight forward. It should be a list of all of the current and active notifications that you have.
-- What the notification is
-- Tapping on a notification open the corresponding section within the app
-- Functionality to dismiss and notification. Swipe to delete?
-- Any additional functionality: Dismiss all, remind me later, etc.

User Flow We Would Like to See
- We would like to see this user flow captured somehow in your designs :
-- Dashboard - User sees notification in My Profile icon/card/tile. Taps that icon
-- My Profile - User sees the following notification on their screen: “Stephen from IT has your answer about your laptop issue.” with 2 buttons “IM” “Video Call” (Show the user clicking “Video Call” option)
-- Show us a video call (like FaceTime or Google Hangouts). Make sure you are maintaining the General Mills brand look and feel.
-- Show us a modal screen pop-up: “Issue Resolved? Yes or No” 

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Judging Criteria
- How well you design the mobile application concept!
- Cleanliness of your graphics and design
- Design and User Experience

Submission & Source Files
Preview Image
Create your preview image as one 1920x1080 (16:9 Ratio) JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.

Submission File
Please upload PNG images in a zip file with all requested contest requirements stated above. Number your files (01, 02, 03, etc) this will help review them in order.

Source Files
All original source files of the submitted design. Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and saved as layered PSD/AI files. 

Final Fixes
We most likely will not have Final Fixes — Have fun!!